Powerful new analytical tools have been made available to the chemist by a combination of various chromatographic techniques with methods of identifying separated additives and their degradation products by techniques based on infrared and mass spectrometry. In particular supercritical fluid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry has come to the fore. Combinations of polymer pyrolysis with gas chromatography with mass spectrometric identification of the pyrolysis products is throwing new light on what happens to antioxidants and other polymer additives during polymer processing and a products' life. Similarly evolved gas analysis and then thermogravimetry and dynamic scanning calorimetry is proving very useful in antioxidant loss studies.

The book is an up-to-date coverage of the present state of knowledge on the subject of polymer additive systems and as such should be extremely useful to workers in the field.

Roy Crompton was Head of the polymer analysis research department of a major international polymer producer for some 15 years. In the early fifties he was heavily engaged in the development of methods of analysis for low-pressure polyolefins produced by the Ziegler-Natta route, including work on high-density polyethylene and polypropylene. He was responsible for the development of methods of analysis of the organoaluminum catalysts used for the synthesis of these polymers. He was also responsible for the development of thin-layer chromatography for the determination of various types of additives in polymers and did pioneering work on the use of TLC to separate polymer additives and to examine the separated additives by infrared and mass spectrometry. He retired in 1988 and has since been engaged as a consultant in the field of analytical chemistry and has written extensively on this subject, with some 20 books published.